Poem by Joanie DiMartino

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Of course he
would prefer the book
depository, as it was empty:
he desired the solitude of monks,
and he loved being surrounded by
novels, but mostly, he wanted his easel
notched next to the sixth floor window,
where the view of the grassy knoll was
unencumbered, his jute canvas bursting
with studied swirls of green like a lone
lime tree in Arles. Later, before colluding
his suicide with Ruby, he mailed from his
jail cell a package to Jackie: “to the White
House from the Yellow House,” the plain
box read; he wished to replace something
she lost that day in Dallas–a mere
trifle, he knew, but still, he could
not forget the tv footage of her
scrambling over the back
of the convertible–
so he sliced off his
own to return
to her hands
a man’s
ear.

Joanie DiMartino has work published in many literary journals and anthologies, including Modern Haiku, Alimentum, Calyx, and Amethyst Arsenic. She is the author of two collections of poetry, Licking the Spoon, and Strange Girls. She hosts Soup & Sonnets: A Monthly Literary Salon for Women, and directs the Hidden Treasures Poetry Series in partnership with the Courtyard Art Gallery in downtown Mystic, CT. A historian as well as a poet, DiMartino is currently at work on a collection of poems about the 19th-century whaling industry. “Van Gogh as Lee Harvey Oswald” is currently on display as part of the “Salon des Independents” show at the Hygienic Galleries in New London Connecticut.

Allison Goldin is an artist living in Cambridge. Her work is a collection of spontaneous drawings from the imagination. The most common link throughout her art are the semi-recognizable creatures scattered amongst and bringing together the surrounding doodles. She is currently studying Illustration at The School of Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.